Midweek Midway Mixup: Mud & Slush, Grift and Glory and the Straw Houses They Pray For ...

“Staycations” are the new rage, and maybe (or have I already said this), tent shows taking it to the front yards of gas-pump averse Americans, will yet soar this depressed season .... But then again, they may have to compete with Maud’s Ice Cream Parlor, Sammy’s Casino for Dummies. or the local Flea Markets ... BTW: Oklahoma, full of circus savvy, is also full of oil mogul T. Boon Pickens, at 80 charging ahead on the internet to promote his reformed view of an America free of Arabian fuel, full of wind power and other novel alternatives ... Gas, gas, gas. How can these shows afford just to move? I marvel. I marvel. I marvel. Somehow, brother, they keep at it, through mud and muck and wet and shine. Like an adolescent chasing after a second...

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First Draft Reckless. If I Fall Off the Wire, Please Look Away ...

Blogging can be dangerous, like a brutal mixed martial arts boxing match that gives the public blood and gore. No school teacher’s red pencil. No editor over the shoulder. Even the spell checker is a non-human, and it can be tripped up, and here I am, going for it, first draft out the gate...Like they are in Stockton, where those brutal boxers are going at it, and, of all people, tickling a San Francisco sports TV anchor gal, who gushes, “Much more barbaric than any sport I’ve ever seen!” This from the center of PC? I guess... Stockton is the place Ringling allegedly chose over San Francisco — if what a ticket seller at the Cow Palace on the phone keeps telling me. Standard excuse. “They wanted to try Stockton.” Good choice, perhaps. In Stockton,...

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Midweek Midway Mix: Long Live Sawdust Circles and Affordable Fraud

Here we go, down the flats and off the runs in no particular order ... Let’s let Paul Binder kick off this ramble, telling WCAX-TV 3 News in Hanover, NH of his life-long respect for the sawdust circle “This is the original form. This is the form that pre-dated Theatre ... pre-dated Opera and ballet and musical theatre.” Now, does that make you feel proud of our bigtopian addictions? Duz me ... Big Apple Circus’s upcoming season promises a fetching mix of talent and threatens to fly high again, says I, merely examining a released list of some of the acts: Horse rider Christine Zerbini (might that be Sylvia??), Anastasini Family dogs from Rome; the Nan Jing Troupe from China “performing incredible acrobatic ballet;" a Russian barre act named Rodion; the juggling Lasalle Brothers from the USofA...

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What Happened to Celebrity Circus?

Is it gone? Will it return? Will he return? No hints on the NBC website except for this ominous sign-off:“The circus has ended, but the performances live on.”And who “won”? Well, not Janet Evans, the only contestant who impressed me during the one episode (#2) that I slogged through.“Congratulations to Antonio Sabato, Jr.! The big winner of celebrity circus!” -- so reads NBC's declaration.So they gave it to the HUNK. Maybe they liked his family's circus background. Or maybe the HUNK kept the people they were able to scam onto their midway coming back for more. For more. For more."Antonio is the most hottest man on television," reads one comment on NBC. "Too bad I am married!!!!"Antonio told another source, “This means the world.”And what to...

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Midweek Midway Mixup: As Ringling Falls, Rome Rises Again???

Reading the tea leaves, for free: Okay, what a shameless hook, that headline above, to lure all seven of you in — before you escape up the midway to another shameless concession. Yes, I know, the Balloon Man has his lot all fancied up with red white and blue, posters and balloons flying high, or maybe you’re wondering if the Sawdust Nights Kid had another WOOT WOOT day ... But wait, here inside the tea tent, have a little hype and history on me. No, Ringling is NOT falling (not yet, I don’t think), but Rome may be rising anew with a modern version of Circus Maximus, planned to play the crumbling old coliseum. Remember when chariots rumbled and gladiators stumbled? When Christians were thrown to the lions? Open casting call for all Born Agains!...

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When You Wish Upon A Clone

Film Review: Wall EThe opening scenes in Wall E are stunning, let me tell you: A once mighty U.S. metropolis without people, its towering buildings decayed, the fading signs above urging consumers who once lived there to “Buy Large.” It is now a long-lost world buried alive under its own plastic trash. Through it waddles a little rusty robot guy, still picking up garbage and stashing it neatly off into storage units. In the background we hear a song from Hello, Dolly, "Put On Your Sunday Clothes.” Somebody forgot to turn off the last VCR. What a sensational start.Nobody home anymore — but the robot, who ends up whisked away on a space ship to a space station where cloned pig-like humans (evidently, the ones who fled Earth when it could no longer...

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Sunday Morning Turnabout -- Tragedy to Trophies

Sunday morning not so serene. Had something different in mind. Shouldn't have surfed the blogs, full of mud, mayhem and sad sad tragecy ... Let's start out easy: A young kid named Logan Jacot enters the big top, gets bumped on the head and decides to bear the blood without a Doc. A young trouper to the core, Logan blogs of “death and destruction at Lewis & Clark.“ "Death" marks the passing of a baby goat, "destruction" the trauma to Logan's head. Still, this determined kid, all of about 21 or so, has found a home under canvas. Ironically, he calls it "the only consistent thing in my life. I’ve always been able to count on it to take care of me both physically and emotionally, I hope it’ll always be around to take care of me.”Then there’s...

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Midweek Midway Mix: Misunderstood Tycoons to Unwanted Popcorn Machines

They’re fighting over San Francisco, of all places, or is it merely accidental? Circus Vargas gets there first, slated to play back of the city’s famed ball park, near where the upscale rich (adult) kids live. Maybe without animals, the show will draw yuppies seeking relief from auto travel ... Then comes the Big One in early September, down by lower class Cow Palace. Carson & Barnes has three rings of live animals and they might have an audience of grateful Hispanics, about the only group left giving birth to real live children in the city by the bay ... I give CV kudos for landing that tony lot by the bay. It alone should draw crowds ... As for the cow barn, it will surely draw PETA — and me.Victoria, you are gifted 11-year-old contortionist from Asia, adopted by American parents, and...

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Sunday Monring, Looking Back: The Impresario Only Wants Power

This first appeared on July 6, 2008In the beginning, according to the account of a key inside source, they among the young “team” decided his youth and energy was a good thing, so they together said, “Okay, you be the front man. You be the leader.” And he went out and drummed up interest and money, and he called them from Italy. I have just bought us a tent.He talked them into going to another country to test their luck away from home. And so they did. And they were a huge success. And they continued to grow and prosper and multiply. And with each new triumph, he became more confident of himself.He had no artistic ideas of his own, but left that to the others. He listened to them offer their ideas, and then rejected them all. But a week or...

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Mid Week Midway L’Amyx: Baraboo to Bucharest ..

Drop the name “Ringling,” and Baraboo’s man for all seasons, Bob Dewel, is the first in line. The retired Doc, still working his finger magic across the Al Ringling Theatre organ keyboard, is advancing merrily towards his 89th birthday. And he faces a new season of Ringling Theatre tours with gentlemanly exuberance. Notes he, in reply to my touting the great Louise Ringling as First Lady of the Circus, First Lady was served divorce papers by husband Albert ... Another local Ringling expert, Paul Wolter of the Sauk County Historical Society, fleshes out the unpleasant inconvenience it caused both parties: “When Al filed for divorce in 1914, Lou surprised him by getting a lawyer of her own and responding with terms.” The marital tension was negotiated back into the back yard after Albert gave...

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